


Character Sketches

by Ariel_Tempest



Series: A Long Time Coming [4]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Character Study, Family, Fluff, Gen, Mild Angst, Original Character(s), Post-Series, Relatives, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 00:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Tempest/pseuds/Ariel_Tempest
Summary: A look at the people who have touched the life of Lindsey McClintock on his way to Downton Abbey.





	Character Sketches

Granny always called Mummy “Lettie”. “Don’t fuss,” she would say when he started to get squirrely, “Lettie will be home in an hour or so.” And soon enough, although it seemed like forever to a small boy, she would walk through the door. She always smiled when he ran to her, arms open for a hug, begging to be picked up.

“Not now, Lindsey, dearest,” she would say, petting his hair after she’d hugged him. “After dinner we can play a little. Let Mummy sit down first. Her feet hurt.” She always talked about herself like that when she was talking to him, as if she were talking about someone else. With Granny she said “me” and “my” and all of the normal things. He never thought to question why.

On Fridays, Mummy would bring treats home with her. She would bring him biscuits or a lolly and he would sit in her lap as she rested her feet. “You spoil that boy,” Granny would say. 

Mummy would pet his hair and smile at him, as if he were the one who had been lecturing her, not Granny. “If life worked as it ought, he’d be spoiled every day. He’d have puddings and cakes and all of the good things. What harm if I spoil him a little?”

* * *

After they buried Mummy, Granny had no time for him. No time and no money, that was what she said. “What am I supposed to do with the boy?” she would ask the neighbors over the fence. “Can’t earn a wage yet, and it’s so much fuss taking him back and forth to school. Without Lettie’s money, I can barely keep myself fed, so how am I supposed to feed him?”

He heard her talk about places, orphanages and work houses. They sounded awful. He offered to find a way to make money or cook food, but she laughed at him. “Well, bless your heart I’m sure you mean it,” she would say, and she would sound a little less cross when she did. “But a seven year old boy is no good to anyone. Not old enough to do more than fetch and carry, and not even that properly, and in school more often than not.” She sighed. “Suppose I could take you out of classes, but Lettie’d come back and haunt me if I did.”

Sometimes he thought about saying he wouldn’t mind if Mummy came back and haunted them, not if he could see her again, but he was afraid. What if she came back and it was like it had been at the end, with her jaw clenched and her back arching, sometimes not even able to breathe? He’d rather she stay in Heaven and be well than come back to haunt them and be ill again.

* * *

Uncle Harry had the grandest chair he’d ever seen. It had wheels on it and Harry sat in it all of the time, unless he was in bed or needed to take a bath or other natural things. At first he’d been a little in awe of his uncle and his chair. Granny said he’d fought in the Great War and that he was a hero. After only about a week of being asked to climb up on a chair and fetch things down from cupboards, he lost his shyness and came to view his uncle like any other man. Sometimes Harry would even let him sit in his lap, like Mummy had, in that great, wheeled chair. He said with Lindsey there, it was almost like having legs again.

Generally Harry’s friend Ezra came past once a day. Ezra was tall and always well dressed, but on his first visit he’d brought Lindsey a lolly, so Lindsey had never once been afraid of him. Ezra would help Harry with things around the house, like cooking dinner. As Lindsey learned how to do more, Ezra joked that he’d be out of a job soon. On school days, Ezra would sometimes walk Lindsey home from the school house.

Ezra had also been in the war. That was where he and Harry had met, but Ezra didn’t have a chair. He had a job instead and a much bigger house than Harry and Lindsey and a housekeeper who nagged at him, or so he said. Lindsey asked once why he didn’t take Harry to live with him, so that he didn’t have to come to Harry’s house to help. He had looked very sad for a moment, then said “It wouldn’t be a good idea.” After a brief pause he added, “Too many stairs.”

When Lindsey had asked Harry why Ezra had looked so sad about such a practical problem, Harry had just said, “Sometimes our hearts want what we can’t have. All we can do is make the best of it.” Lindsey didn’t understand, but he couldn’t get anything more out of the older man except a bout of coughing. “Do fetch me some water, will you? There’s a good boy.”

* * *

Ezra had wanted to take Lindsey to live with him, after they buried Uncle Harry, but Aunt Mable hadn’t let him. “No man has business raising a boy by himself,” she’d insisted. “Least of all a man like you.”

And so Lindsey had gone to live with her and her husband, James, and their daughter, Ellen, and all of their rules. They had a lot of rules. In their house you had to sit up straight and not speak unless you were spoken to. You couldn’t run or comb your hair in the wrong manner or wear trousers with scuffed knees. Everything had to be “just so”.

Lindsey wasn’t “just so”. Mable scolded him ten times a day, at least. “An Earl, Lettie said,” she would tsk. “Posture like that, you wouldn’t make a footman. Keep your head up.” She made certain that Ellen got him to school early and home straight away and she had him read books that were more advanced than he was, all in hopes that he would someday be worth more than a ditch digger.

* * *

Cousin Bertha had given up on him even faster than Aunt Mable, it seemed, although for different reasons. “I said I needed help with the farming, not the mending!” she’d said the first time she saw him. She’d then immediately sat him down with a bowl of stew and some bread and told him to get some meat on his bones.

He had tried, he really had. He had given himself blisters swinging an ax and not chopped a tenth the firewood that Robby and Geordie had managed. Peg and Johnny got the eggs in the morning, and Geordie milked the cows. He’d tried to teach Lindsey, but that had resulted in a sore foot and a spilled milk bucket. Between Eliza, Fanny, and little Lucy, the household chores were far from neglected. No one was willing to let him near the thresher, not with Johnny, who was just older than Lindsey and had more experience, having lost his arm.

They tried too. Eliza and Fanny had amused themselves weaving flower crowns for him to wear. Johnny had asked him for help with his school work, even though he was further along. When Bertha had found him crying quietly in the room he shared with Robby and Geordie she’d wrapped a thick arm around his shoulders. “There, now, no need for that,” she’d told him in her brusque manner. “I know you miss your Mum and your Granny too, probably. And heaven knows I don’t know what to do with you here, but you’re alive. You’ve got your health, and we can feed you awhile longer. Now go down and help the twins get the table set for supper.”

* * *

It was Sunday. Sunday meant that Mr. Molesley had the day off from work and that Cousin Phyllis would be coming home for lunch, rather than eating up at the house like she normally did. Occasionally Mr. Barrow, Uncle Thomas, would come with her, but never two weeks in a row. The adults said it was because, as butler, he was a very busy man, but it was obvious even to a ten-year-old that he and Mr. Molesley didn’t get on all that well and he’d once heard Phyllis mutter under her breath that they gave her a headache some days. 

Lindsey cleared the table and laid out the bowls for the soup that Mr. Molesley was tending on the stove. The two of them had spent the morning double checking his school work, so they would have the afternoon free for more pleasant things. They hadn’t decided what things yet. Possibly they would go for a walk or spend some time reading. There had been talk of a picnic for the children up at the big house for tea, but he hadn’t decided yet if he wanted to go. He had met the other children of Downton, both high and low, and he liked them well enough, but he was still shy around them. 

The soup was on the table when the door opened and Phyllis walked in. She greeted Mr. Molesley with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, which he returned. They smiled a lot. They smiled at each other and they smiled at Lindsey and Phyllis at least smiled at Uncle Thomas, usually. Uncle Thomas, for his part, rolled his eyes and called them a pair of hopeless love birds. 

“Good afternoon, Cousin Phyllis,” Lindsey greeted her from his place next to the table. 

“Good afternoon, Lindsey,” she replied, turning that smile on him. “Have you had a good morning?”

“We have,” he replied, solemn and obedient, as a young man ought to be. “Mr. Molesley looked at my school work for me.”

“It was very good,” Mr. Molesley chimed in. He smiled, then, a lopsided sort of smile, and added, “Soon I won’t be able to help him with maths, though. He’s getting beyond me there.”

Lindsey felt himself blush and the corners of his mouth curl up a bit, even though he hadn’t meant for them too. “I like maths.”

“I’m glad,” Cousin Phyllis replied. Her eyebrows knit slightly, but not as if she were sad or worried. She sometimes looked at him like that, but now she looked different. She looked proud, like Mummy always had. “We can find someone else to help you with maths, if we need,” she continued with a brief, sideways look at Mr. Molesley. Lindsey suspected she meant Uncle Thomas.

Mr. Molesley either ignored the look or didn’t have the same suspicions, because there was no sigh to his voice as he said, “Well then, let’s eat, shall we? Lindsey, would you fetch the bread?”

And Lindsey did and Cousin Phyllis fetched the tea and as they sat down at the table, Cousin Phyllis kept smiling at him.


End file.
